LLELA's new Information Center
LLELA has not had any kind of permanent activity/nature center for the general public. That changed recently with the opening of the new Information Center earlier this month. This is a temporary, although perhaps multi-year, solution. The current center is an "Information Center", not to be confused with a planned permanent nature center possibly built in cooperation with the National Audubon Society. However, that may have to wait a few years for road construction and other improvements.
The new Information Center is in one of the portable buildings donated by LISD. It is currently only open 9-4 on Saturdays and 1-4 on Sundays. We went through the volunteer training two weekends ago and actually manned the center last Saturday, 9-1.
The Information Center is still a work in progress, but it was fun volunteering. It does not look like much from the outside, especially since the permanent welcome sign is still on order, but it does have air conditioning and indoor plumbing.
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| The entrance to the Information Center with my homemade sign to let people know they could/should come in. |
There are a few displays inside.
There are also some hands-on items to feel and touch: beaver skeleton, alligator gar skeleton, bird's nest, etc. and a sandbox with molds to make animal tracks such as raccoon, deer, bobcat, and coyote.
There is a very nice wall size map of all the trails at LLELA. That came in very handy, since most of the folks that came by were interested in learning what trail they should take. We are very happy to talk extensively about the trails since we walk the trails (weather permitting) at least once a week and often more.
However the best part of the Info Center by far, at least in my opinion, is the picture wall. It is a collection of pictures of various animals, including insects, taken at LLELA. These were the same pictures that were on display at the Lewisville Public Library during the month of August and include several of the Frog's pictures.
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| Picture wall in the Information Center |
Almost everyone that came in was surprised at the wide diversity of animal life that had been observed. People seemed to especially enjoy the bald eagle, the bobcat, and some of the snakes. However, the one that generated the most interest, hands down, was the alligator.
Even More Excitement
As exciting as volunteering in the Info Center was, that was not even the high point of our LLELA experience that week. On one of our walks we observed a damselfly whose identity has totally baffled the dragonfly/damselfly experts nationwide. Yes, really!
Here is the story.
Having Fun with iNaturalist
When we walk at LLELA the Frog takes pictures of the living things we see. Once we get home, I post the pictures as observations on iNaturalist.
I cannot overstate how much iNaturalist has helped us learn about the nature we are observing. It is helpful in at least two ways.
First of all, iNaturalist has built in artificial intelligence that provides suggestions as to the identity of the animal or plant in the picture. This is a brand new feature in the past few months, although the development of the software and hardware took some time. As a user I can say it is stunningly good. With a few exceptions the suggestions are usually spot on. It is also very user friendly. Each of the suggestions comes back with links to pictures, the specie's Wikipedia page, maps of where it has been sighted, and a list with pictures of species with which it is most often confused. Such immediate feedback and ease in doing more research makes learning about the things we see a lot of fun.
Once the observation with picture, location, and possible identity is posted, volunteers respond to help with the identity. They can agree, disagree, or make alternative suggestions. I have also sometimes asked them questions and they always seem willing to respond. The volunteers doing the identifying can be anyone, but are often experts in the field. What is stunning is the speed of the responses. For birds and dragonflies the response can often be within minutes or less. Admittedly we are helping ourselves by providing first class images, but we could not pay for the help we are receiving from these people.
New Critter at LLELA?
So what does this have to do with anything? On October 6 we saw this bright blue damselfly while walking on the Blackjack Trail at LLELA. You cannot tell from these zoomed in pictures but he is very little, probably two inches long max.
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| Mystery damselfly |
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| Mystery damselfy |
He is not that different from many of the other bright blue damselflies we have seen, but the markings on his thorax and abdomen didn't quite fit with anything that came up as suggestions on iNaturalist or was shown in any of the books I have on damselflies. That is no biggie...I frequently struggle with damselfly identification. I just listed it generically and posted it to iNaturalist.
Here is our posting on iNaturalist which I made at 3:45 pm that day: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8286492 By the time I checked back (after dinner?) I had a response from one of the major damselfly experts indicating this guy looked interesting but he could not identify it. He was contacting some academic damselfly experts for help. They looked at it over the next few days and they could not identify it either. Apparently this little guy had the damselfly experts baffled. Yes, really!!
Familiar Dancer??
Several of the experts thought it most resembled an Argia oculata or common name "Familiar Dancer". They were also very excited and were urging people in the DFW area to go looking for it to confirm the ID.
OK, all of this did not mean much to me so I began to do some digging. I initially had trouble finding out much about Argia oculata. The known range for them is Mexico, Central Amreica, and northern South America.
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| Location of iNaturalist observations for Argia oculata. Although not shown, they also exist in other locations such as Columbia |
It was not in my books about Texas damselflies or U.S. damselflies since it is not known in the U.S. I finally found a Wiki page in Spanish (Argia oculata on Wikipedia). (BTW, one of the translating programs translated what must have been the Spanish for dragonfly to "horse of the devil"!) I finally found one page of info in English: description and pictures of Argia oculata.
One of the comments under iNaturalist on our posting indicated that if it really was an Argia oculata, it would only be the second sighting in the U.S. That would be cool. What I did not know was that the first sighting had only occurred in September 2017 and was in far southern Arizona along the Mexican border. (See Arizona dragonflies page for Familiar Dancer and Troy Hibbit's page on Argia oculata).
Needle in a Haystack
It was clear no one was going to be comfortable making an ID from pictures for a critter that was so far from its normal range, especially since there was still ambiguity in the appearance. It would be necessary to catch the little guy and send it to the lab for inspection under a microscope.
The Urban Wildlife Biologist in Dallas/Fort Worth with Texas Parks and Wildlife organized a get-together for Saturday morning, October 14, to try and find this little guy: Unfortunately it was during our time volunteering in the Info Center so we could not tag along. All the folks that did show up (about eleven total, I think) did stop by the Info Center to say hi before heading out.
Perhaps to no one's great surprise, they did not find the Mystery Damselfly but they all seemed to have fun. At least we got to meet a whole host of nice people, many of whom we knew from online but had never met in person.
Was it a Familiar Dancer? We may never know, but it was an interesting exercise that was only made possible because of the online community of people linked together through this remarkable program iNaturalist. Thank you software engineers!
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